Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, July 15, 2007

The Bedouins who fought for Israel in 1948

I'm still working on the next chapter of my Psychological History of Palestinian Arabs, but I just stumbled on an article in the Palestine Post from August, 1948 that fits in nicely with my last part about the Arabs of Abu Ghosh.

The Bedouin village of Tuba cast their lot with the Zionists in the 1948 war (as well as during the 1936 Arab riots.) This further proves that the Palestinian Arabs at that point in history were far from unified, and it proves as well that the Zionist were not interested in "ethnic cleansing" but in having Arab citizens who wanted to live in peace.

The lazy anti-semitism of the British intelligentsia

Alistair Horne is a well-regarded British historian, whose chronicle of the Algerian war has been complimented by Henry Kissinger as well as President Bush, and who was invited to the White House as a result.

As he writes in an article about that meeting:

In an earlier exchange of correspondence with the President, I had presumed to suggest that, in Iraq, he faced "perhaps the most daunting responsibility" of any US President since FDR, and in the Oval Office I threw out a remark of Harold Macmillan's: "You have no idea, dear boy, how lonely it is at the top."
The President parried laughingly, pointing at his aides: "You don't imagine I could be lonely with all these guys around me!"
He questioned me closely about the parallels between Iraq and Algeria. It was clear that he had read attentively what I had written.
I outlined four main points: the difficulty of combating insurgents with a regular modern army; porous frontiers (for Iran and Syria, read Morocco and Tunisia in the Algerian context); most important and dangerous, the ruthless targeting of the local police forces (and, now, the fledgling Iraqi army); and the difficulty of extrication.
I recalled that the Algerian War lasted eight years and, at the end, France's de Gaulle had lost his shirt, everything.
I omitted a fifth point, on which I personally feel most strongly: the vile issue of torture (or, in Iraq, read "abuse"). The President had, I was advised, already got the message, and was heeding the clamour which, with others, I had raised earlier on CNN, and was going to lead to the closing down of Guantanamo.
It would, I felt, be impertinent for a "limey" historian to tell the President how to conduct forward policy in Iraq. But I was at one with him on the appalling danger of a precipitate US withdrawal. That would be infinitely more dangerous than in either Vietnam or Algeria.

Clearly, this is no lightweight kneejerk liberal.

But a couple of paragraphs later, Horne throws this in his article:

Bush, an honourable man, might have made a good President - without Iraq. His fault was to heed too often the voices of the Zionist lobby in Washington. Never before has the Israeli tail wagged the American dog quite so vigorously; the results threaten to prove as disastrous for Israel as for the Western alliance.

I don't know if this is a reflection of pure laziness and ambient anti-semitism on Horne's part, or if the idea that the Iraq war is a purely Zionist adventure is so often repeated by the leftist press that he hasn't even considered how absurd this is.

If Israel had so much power over America then perhaps the idea of a terror-infested Palestinian Arab state would not be seen as such a foregone conclusion.

Shmittah produce from Gaza?

The New York Times mentions:

Hamas officials say they want to start negotiations with Israel about reopening the formal crossings. Major Lerner said that Hamas had “a few things to do” first, including recognizing Israel’s right to exist and freeing Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier captured and taken to Gaza in a raid more than a year ago.
But the ultimate test of pragmatism may come in September when the Hebrew calendar enters what is known in Jewish law as a “shmita” year. Then the fields of Israel are supposed to lie fallow, and observant Jews seek agricultural products grown elsewhere. Before the Hamas takeover, Israel’s rabbis had reached agreements with Palestinians to import vegetables from Gaza, Major Lerner said. Given the needs of both sides, it may still happen.

Elder Brother of Ziyon points out an episode that gained some notoriety in 1978 when some Europeans were poisoned with doctored Israeli fruit:

Dinner was finished. Because they had eaten so well, the four children of Mr. and Mrs. Frans Bergs in the southern Dutch town of Maastricht were granted a favorite treat for dessert: big, golden Jaffa oranges from Israel. Unexpectedly, the children complained about the taste. "When we took a closer look," Mrs. Bergs said later, "we discovered small, silver-colored globules inside." The children were rushed to a hospital to have their stomachs pumped; police summoned to investigate erroneously assumed that Mr. Bergs had tried to poison his family. But Dutch health officials began a nationwide search, and by week's end they had discovered 25 oranges from Israel that had been injected with mercury. More sabotaged Israeli oranges were found in nine West German towns.

The pea-sized pellets were not soluble mercury, which can severely damage the kidneys if ingested, but the metallic mercury of the kind used in thermometers —potentially dangerous to very young children but not to adults. Nonetheless, the tampered oranges were a shock to Europe, especially after it became known that they were fruits of political terrorism. In a letter to the West German government, an extremist group calling itself the Arab Revolutionary Army-Palestine Command claimed it had doctored the fruit to disrupt Israel's economy.

It appears that the fruit were not poisoned in Israel, but in some European ports by what appeared to be German radicals sympathetic to the Arabs. But one copycat episode did occur in Israel the following year by the PFLP, in which it was attempted to poison some fruit in Tel Aviv in order to spread panic in Israel.

The definition of terrorism is to spread fear among a civilian population for political purposes, so there is fundamentally no difference in effect between suicide bombings and poisoning a food supply. While there may be good reasons that Hamas may find such methods counterproductive, it seems to be a very serious risk to take when a portion of Israel's population will be dependent on fruits and vegetables grown by non-Jews.

The shadow economy between Israel and Gaza that the NYT article describes can turn out to be deadly if Israelis, prodded by the religious community, import Gazan produce.

EBoZ also points out the fact that the first intifada in 1987 occurred right after a shmittah year - when Palestinian Arabs were flush with money from religious Jews paying them for their fruits and vegetables. While the timing may be coincidental, it is yet another small proof that "poverty" has nothing to do with terror.

UPDATE: joem points out a much more recent poison scare from just last month, where apparently British terror sympathizers painted Israeli basil with bacteria.

Hamas, 1993

Soccer Dad was reminded by my Bir Zeit posting of a Harper's article from 1993 about Hamas' penchant for killing "collaborators."

At the time this was written, Hamas was still regarded universally as a despicable terror group. Now, they manage to write op-eds for major US newspapers.

I was most interested to see that 200 "collaborators" that this article notes were executed by Islamists during the first intifada. In fact during that conflict there were over 1000 PalArabs killed by each other, and in 1991 more Palestinian Arabs were killed by other PalArabs than by Israelis. It is an amazingly consistent fact of Palestinian Arab history that any long-term violence against Jews inevitably ends up with more Arab-on-Arab violence.

From a clandestine videotape made last summer by the Squads of Ez ed-Deen el-Qassam, the military arm of Hamas, the Islamic Palestinian group that in the past three years has risen to prominence in the Israeli-occupied territories. The squads, which number about 100 men each, are responsible for having killed about a dozen Israeli soldiers and settlers in the past year; last December the Israeli government deported 415 Palestinians to Lebanon in response to the kidnapping and execution by Hamas of an Israeli soldier in the Gaza Strip. The videotape, which is intended to recruit and inspire followers of Hamas, has been covertly copied and passed among Palestinians in the occupied territories. It is more than four hours long and contains news reports of Hamas attacks on Israelis, instructions on handling weapons, and interviews with members of the squads and with blindfolded Palestinians accused of collaborating with the Israeli security forces. More than 200 Palestinians have been killed during the intifada for "collaboration," a term that can include anything from working for the Israeli military to informing on other Palestinians. The speaker whose statement appears below is one of the leaders of the squads. translated from the Arabic by Harper's Magazine.

In the name of God, the Gracious, the Merciful. My name is Yasser Hammad al-Hassan Ali. I live in al-Nusseirat [a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip]. I was born in 1964. I finished high school, then attended Gaza Polytechnic. Later, I went to work for the Islamic University in Gaza as a clerk. I'm married, and I have two daughters.

The Squads of Ez ed-Deen el-Qassam are the only group in Palestine explicitly dedicated to jihad. Our name may be new, but our apparatus has been in place for years. Our primary concern is Palestinians who collaborate with the enemy, which we regard as one of the most dire problems facing the Palestinian nation. our enemies have dedicated themselves to luring as many Palestinians as possible down the path of collaboration. Many young men and women have fallen prey to the cunning traps laid by the [Israeli] Security Services.

Since our enemies are trying with all their might to obliterate our nation, cooperation with them is clearly a terrible crime. So our most important objective must be to put an end to the plague of collaboration. To do so, we abduct collaborators; intimidate and interrogate them in order to uncover other collaborators; and expose the methods that the enemy uses to lure Palestinians into collaboration in the first place. In addition to that, naturally, we confront the problem of collaborators by executing them.

...

In many cases, we don't have to make our evidence against collaborators public, because everyone knows that they're guilty. But when the public isn't aware that a certain individual is a collaborator, and we accuse him, people are bound to ask for evidence. Many people will proclaim his innocence, especially members of his family, his neighbors, and his friends, so there must be irrefutable proof before he is executed. This proof is usually obtained in the form of a confession.

At first, every collaborator denies his crimes. So we start off by showing the collaborator the testimony against him--written accounts of surveillance of his activities, taped accusations by other collaborators in his network. We tell him that he still has a chance to serve his people, even in the last moment of his life, by confessing and giving us the information we need.

We say that we know his repentance is sincere and that he has been a victim. That kind of talk is convincing. Most of them confess after that. Some others hold out; in those cases, we begin to apply pressure, both psychological and physical. Then the holdouts confess as well....

When we execute a collaborator in public, we use a gun. But after we abduct and interrogate a collaborator, we can't shoot him--to do so might give away our location. That's why collaborators are strangled. Sometimes we ask the collaborator, "What do you think? How should we execute you?" one collaborator told us, "Strangle me." He hated the sight of blood.

See how humane Hamas was back in their early days?

Friday morning links

Augean Stables writes another brilliant essay.

Two good articles on how jihadists are using the media better than we are.

German firms seem hellbent on a new Holocaust, as they are smuggling nuclear material into Iran. And with the amount of anti-semitism in East Germany, this is not surprising.

A French writer notices that Israel does a damn good job in preserving history.

A Palestinian Arab has much better advice about the PA than the entire State Department, EU and Israeli cabinet put together.

An nuclear scientist expects a Chernobyl in Iran - and that's even without worrying about earthquakes.

A small tribute to Doug Marlette

Editorial cartoonist Doug Marlette died this week in a car accident.

Like most of his profession, Marlette tended towards the liberal side, and he had a tendency to place a moral equivalence between Israel and terrorists. But one of his cartoons, for which he took an enormous amount of criticism from professional Muslim whiners, deserves to be highlighted:

Egyptians freak out when they find out lecturer was a rabbi

Good old fashioned Jew-hatred is alive and well in Egypt:

A seminar organised by Ain Shams University's Centre for the Study of Contemporary Civilisations (CSCC) ended in uproar when several participating Egyptian professors discovered that Robin Firestone, the American professor delivering a paper on the "Problematic of the Chosen in Monotheistic Religions", was a rabbi....

Mohamed El-Hawwari, head of the CSCC, defended the choice of Firestone as a lecturer. Interviewed by Al-Ahram Weekly El-Hawwari stressed that Firestone, while entitled to call himself a "rabbi", does not work in the religious field. "He is an American academic professor and it was in this capacity that he was invited to deliver his lecture."

In a statement issued once the row had become public, El-Hawwari described Firestone as a professor of Jewish history at Hebro Union College, California, and the author of many books on both Jewish and Islamic history.

"I have known the guy for more than 20 years. He has never attacked Islam, which he respects and appreciates," said El-Hawwari. "His lecture was based on texts derived from the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Talmud.

"When I invited Firestone to offer his lecture I did not expect him to utter the two testimonies of Islam and announce that he had become a Muslim. It's natural for him to adopt religious concepts different from our own," said El-Hawwari, commenting on Firestone's reference to Isaac [as the son almost sacrificed by Abraham - EoZ].

"Our main problem is that we still cannot accept the other. Whoever differs with us becomes our enemy," El-Hawwari continued. Yet the aim of holding such lecture series is to help in understanding the views of the other "in the hope this will facilitate a rapprochement between cultures and civilisations".

El-Hawwari dismissed allegations that the lecture's real aim was to provide propaganda for normalising relations with Israel as nonsense, and an insult to the integrity of Egyptian academics.

The furore has caused ripples beyond academia, with 20 parliamentary members quick to jump on the bandwagon and demand that the speaker of the People's Assembly summon members of the parliament's Educational Committee for an urgent meeting to determine who is responsible for the convening of such seminars.

They have also demanded that Hani Helal, the minister of higher education, be sacked.

"We are not going to allow Jews to desecrate our universities, spread their Zionist views and brainwash our students," railed independent MP Gamal Zahran.

A video tape and Arabic translation of the lecture are currently being studied by a committee formed by the university to investigate whether there is any substance to claims that the lecture was offensive to Islam.

Following the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty of 1979, Egyptian educational institutions have refused to deal with their Israeli counterparts and have steadfastly refused cultural normalisation.

Notice that even the academic that invited Firestone bristles at the very idea that he wanted to have Israeli thoughts presented at an Egyptian university.

In other words, this article from an Egyptian English newspaper proves that academic freedom at Egyptian universities is non-existent and that free inquiry is not only discouraged - it is threatened when it accidentally appears.

Not to mention that Egyptian Parliament officials can spout anti-semitism without the slightest fear of being criticized.

I wonder if any European country will call to boycott Egyptian universities?

PalArab Academia: Bir Zeit University

This week, there were violent fights between Hamas and Fatah students at Bir Zeit University, injuring 20 students, and culminating with Fatah security forces arresting the Student Council head who is a member of Hamas.

Bir Zeit, for its part, put out a statement where it claimed that these were very unusual events, that it was a tolerant and liberal university, and that the media shouldn't make such a big deal about the fights.

How tolerant and liberal is Bir Zeit?

Here's a picture of a photo exhibition that was shown at Bir Zeit a couple of years ago:

Portraits of Palestinian suicide bombers on a wall above pictures of Israeli victims and destroyed Israeli buses at an exhibit at the Birzeit University on the outskirts of the West Bank town of Ramallah. Some Palestinian children collect photos of the bombers. ©AP Images/Muhammed Muheisen

In 2003, during student elections, Hamas candidates blew up models of Israeli buses, and during a debate with Fatah candidates they boasted "Hamas activists in this University killed 135 Zionists. How many did Fatah activists from Bir Zeit kill?"

Yehiya Ayyash, a bomb maker also known as the Engineer, was killed by the IDF for his direct involvement in building bombs and explosives. He was a chemistry student at Bir Zeit.

In April 2001, Diya Tawil, a student of Engineering at Bir Zeit University, blew himself up at a bus stop in a Jewish settlement just outside Jerusalem, killing only himself but injuring more than 30.

Izzedine Al-Masri was a journalism student, and she was the planner and driver for the suicide bomber at the Sbarro pizzeria. She is now in an Israeli jail.

Bir Zeit's web page claims that "Birzeit University is the first institution of higher education to be established in Palestine." Notably, it acquired university status while under Israeli rule. Equally notably, Technion was established in Palestine in 1924, and Hebrew University in 1925. But why should we expect the truth to come out of Bir Zeit?

Today's hypocritical "human rights" group: Physicians for Human Rights (Israel)

According to their website:

Physicians For Human Rights-Israel was founded in 1988 with the goal of struggling for human rights, in particular the right to health, in Israel and the Occupied Territories. Human dignity, wellness of mind and body and the right to health are at the core of the world view of the organization and direct and instruct our activities and efforts on both the individual and general level. Our activities integrate advocacy and action toward changing harmful policies and direct action providing healthcare.

Wonderful words! However, when looking at the press releases of this "human rights" organization, one notices a bit of a one-sidedness as far as what these proud humanitarians condemn.

Some statements have to do with healthcare: they condemn Israel for not allowing Gazans who need medical attention to go into Israel proper to get it. Many of their statements have nothing to do with healthcare - for example, they condemn Israel's "occupation" on the grounds that it prevents Palestinian Arab academic freedom.

None of their statements have any bad words to say about Palestinian Arabs who attack, injure and kill Israelis, such as Sderot rocket attacks. More to the point, I couldn't find a condemnation of Wafa al-Biss, who planned on blowing up an Israeli hospital in 2005.

One would think that these misguided physicians are perhaps only sensitive to Palestinian Arab lives, not Jewish ones. But does that explain their silence when Gaza terrorists murdered patients in their beds in a hospital just last month as they used hospitals for gunbattles? And then did it again?

No, the pattern isn't that these physicians care about Palestinian Arabs more than Jews. The pattern is that they exclusively condemn Israel, period, despite their stated goals. Their silence about Arab on Arab fighting, killing hundreds of Palestinian Arabs this year alone, shows that they don't really care about PalArabs at all.

They're just another bunch of hypocrites hiding behind their status as doctors, and in effect their goals are no different than the doctors recently arrested in the UK. Their interest in human rights is nil.

Download the Elder Toolbar

I never wanted to put ads on my site, but I stumbled on a nice and unobtrusive way to make a few cents a month: a customized toolbar.

I only played with this a little, and it has a number of features that I haven't configured, but if you are interested in an Elder of Ziyon toolbar to help with your searches as well as pre-configured links to some nice sources, click here.

Right now it links to a few Israeli radio stations, the charities on my sidebar, and some news sources. You can also add gadgets like weather reports or a calculator. If people like it I can maintain it, add things like chat, messages, other radio stations and other RSS feeds.

It works with both IE and Mozilla.

If you hate it and delete the thing, I promise I won't be insulted :)

UNIFIL getting chummy with Hezbollah again

From Time:

After the war in south Lebanon last summer, the small United Nations peacekeeping mission here was bolstered by the arrival of thousands of crack European troops determined to keep Hizballah fighters away from the border with Israel. A year on, however, and some of those same European contingents are now seeking the cooperation of the Iran-backed Hizballah to help protect them from Al-Qaeda-inspired militants....
Sources tell TIME that, since the [June 24th bombing] attack, there have been discreet contacts between some UNIFIL contingents and Hizballah representatives. UNIFIL is supposed to confine liaison to the Lebanese army, and Graziano said that direct contacts between UNIFIL troops and Hizballah, or any other Lebanese political party, was "highly forbidden". But keeping some type of contact may be critical to UNIFIL's mission. The goal of the informal communications is partly to harness Hizballah's local intelligence gathering abilities, but also to ensure that the powerful Shi'ite group remains supportive of UNIFIL. The unspoken fear among some peacekeepers is that although Hizballah strongly denounced the bombing, it may have known of the attack beforehand or may even have been involved, which, if true, would have dire repercussions on UNIFIL's future. "I cannot dismiss that at a national level there is a diplomatic relation [between troop contributing states and Hizballah] but that has nothing to do with the United Nations," Graziano said. "If somebody [in UNIFIL] does have a relation [with Hizballah] it's against my will."

Nonetheless, a Hizballah official in south Lebanon confirmed to TIME that there was at least one meeting between Spanish UNIFIL officers and Hizballah representatives after the bomb attack. Furthermore, Hizballah officials have met with Spanish diplomats in Beirut and the Madrid government is believed to have held talks with Iran, Hizballah's patron, on the safety of its peacekeepers. At least one other European contingent enjoys regular direct contact with Hizballah, finessing Graziano's order by using a civilian advisor who was hired outside the UNIFIL framework.

To sum it up: Hezbollah was always dead-set against UNIFIL's expanded presence under UN Resolution 1701. UNIFIL is forbidden to have contacts with Hezbollah.

And the goal of the forbidden talks is to keep Hezbollah "supportive" of UNIFIL while at the same time it is admitted that Hezbollah may have had a hand in the fatal bombing of UN workers.

The long friendship of UNIFIL and Hezbollah continues....

"Arafat died of AIDS"

From MEMRI:

Following is an excerpt from an interview with Ahmad Jibril, Secretary-General of the PFLP General Command, which aired on Al-Manar TV on July 5, 2007:

Ahmad Jibril: When Abu Mazen came to Damascus with his team, I asked them: "What happened to the investigation into the death of Abu Ammar [Arafat]? The Israelis killed him. He was my colleague ever since 1965 and used to sleep at my home. He and I followed the same path." Is it conceivable that when Rafiq Al-Hariri was killed, all hell broke loose, even though he was just a merchant in Saudi Arabia, who later entered politics, whereas the death of Yasser Arafat, who for 40 years had been carrying his gun from one place to another, is not investigate[d]? Is this conceivable? They were silent, and then one of them said to me: "To be honest, the French gave us the medical report, that stated that the cause of Abu Ammar's death was AIDS." I am not saying this, they did.

So did I, before he even died....

From Arutz-7:

The Islamic Wakf is digging large ditches on the Temple Mount without archaeological supervision to protect antiquities at Judaism’s holiest site.

Photos of the construction were publicized earlier this week. Investigation revealed that the dig had been approved by the police, though not coordinated with any archeological authorities. The ditch is being dug in the direction of the Dome of the Rock, the site of the Holy Temple, according to most opinions.

Police approval of the project, which involves heavy machinery, as well as a JCB tractor, was apparantly approved by the head of Israel’s Antiquity Authority. "The trench depth varies from 50 – 100 cm deep!" reports Zachi Zweig, an archaeologist that has been involved in exposing the Islamic Wakf's campaign of destroying Jewish artifacts on the mount. "Grey earth was removed from the dig, which indicates that it is archaeologically significant. In addition, signs of ancient architecture was exposed beneath the current platform slabs. It should be mentioned that the bedrock level at this location is very close to the current platform."

Zweig, who started the Temple Mound Debris-Sifting Project following his publicizing the dumbing of artifacts by the Wakf in the Kidron Valley, says the Antiquities Authority shares responsibility for the destruction. "It is an atrocity for which Antiquities Authority Director Shuka Dorfman, who authorized the dig, is responsible," Zweig said. "Ancient architectural remains were exposed during this dig in the northern section of the trench. No reasonable archaeologist would justify conducting a mechanical dig in such a sensitive location. The core problem here is that the IAA director is not an archaeologist - but rather a politician."

Past excavations carried out by the Wakf resulted in tons of priceless archaeological artifacts being mixed with garbage and dumped in the Kidron Valley. Some of that dumped earth was transported to the Tzurim Valley, below Hebrew University, where Zweig organized a group of archaeological students and volunteers who are still sifting through it after finding antiquities from the First and Second Temple periods.

Two archaeology students were detained by police Tuesday after asking workers questions about the dig. “The workers ignored us and called a Wakf official over. He complained to the police and upon our exiting the mount we were detained,” one of the students told Arutz-7.

Another group of archaeologists, the Committee for the Prevention of the Destruction of Temple Mount Antiquities, has protested the latest unsupervised construction by the Wakf, demanding that archaeologists be brought in to conduct the digging in a professional and documented manner.

Deadly riots by bloodthirsty extremist Jews should start any minute now. After all, all religious fanatics are the same.

Freedom of the press, PalArab style (III)

Another story showing how progressive Hamastan is:

The Hamas-affiliated Executive Force on Wednesday stormed the media tower in Tal Al-Hawa, in the south of Gaza City, and stole the car and mobile telephone of Palestine TV satellite channel manager, Muhammad Dawoudi.

Media sources told Ma'an that the Executive Force entered Dawoudi's home in the residential part of the tower and attempted to arrest him, yet dozens of journalists intervened and prevented the arrest.

The Union of Palestinian Journalists has condemned the repeated assaults against journalists, in general, and this attack against Dawoudi in particular.

In a statement to Ma'an, the union declared "such conduct represent a violation of the freedom of opinion", describing the attacks as "ideological terrorism" against journalists.

This of course begs the question of how so many liberals (like Jimmy Carter) can support a movement that goes against everything that is supposed to be important to liberals - like, you know, freedom.

Is Fatah al-Islam "Palestinian"?

Note this story from AP:

At least 150 Palestinians fled a northern refugee camp Wednesday in anticipation of an assault by the Lebanese army battling Islamic militants holed up inside.
Most of the refugees left with the help of the Palestinian Red Crescent, said Samar Kadi, an International Committee of the Red Cross communications officer.

Those fleeing arrived on foot at the southern entrance of the Nahr el-Bared camp. They were searched by soldiers at a Lebanese army checkpoint and then climbed into vehicles sent by the Palestinian Red Crescent. The Lebanese army held many of them for interrogation, Kadi said.
...
The mainstream Palestinian Fatah movement was reported to have called on its guerrillas inside the camp to leave as well.
...Fatah Islam group is believed to be made up of mostly foreign Sunni Muslim fighters, and Lebanon's Western-backed government has accused the group of trying, with Syria's backing, to launch a rebellion in the north of the country and destabilize Lebanon. Syria denies the allegations and has described Fatah Islam as a dangerous terrorist organization.

Notice how AP calls the people leaving the camp "Palestinian" but the terrorists inside the camp are only "Islamic." Are we to believe that a miserable "refugee" camp was infiltrated by non-Palestinian Arabs as a base to attack Lebanon?

It is hard to know for sure. Some people say that they are a Syrian organization, other say they are al-Qaeda.

We do know that the leader of Fatah al-Islam is a Palestinian Arab, Shaker Absi.
We do know that they managed to get into these camps whose security is run by Fatah without much difficulty.
We do know that many of the PalArabs fleeing are being held by Lebanon on suspicion of being involved with Fatah al Islam.

It strains credulity to think that a couple of hundred Syrians and Saudi Arabians went to Lebanese camp hell-holes just to have a base from which to attack the Lebanese. It seems more logical that radical Palestinian Arabs went into the camps in order to recruit more people for their cause, which would indicate a majority as being Palestinian themselves.

The AP, however, will not even entertain such a notion. To even imply that Fatah al-Islam is a Palestinian Islamic terror group would reflect badly on all those good Palestinian Arabs who are the real heroes according to the mainstream media. So don't expect this to be a topic that will be investigated too thoroughly - much easier to blame Syria or Al-Qaeda, the known bad guys.